Post 9/11, CIA and Pentagon Forced Doctors to Become Torturers, New Study Charges

The Guardian UK headline on November 4 reconfirms the outlaw depravity of the US after 9/11 in terms of torture, "CIA made doctors torture suspected terrorists after 9/11, taskforce finds: Doctors were asked to torture detainees for intelligence gathering, and unethical practices continue, review concludes."

One of things that the "Change" slogan of the 2008 Obama campaign meant to many ethical people who uphold standards of international law and decency is that those responsible for torture under the Bush administration would be held accountable. No such efforts were made under a president who boasts of his assassination list.

The Guardian UK reported:

Doctors and psychologists working for the US military violated the ethical codes of their profession under instruction from the defence department and the CIA to become involved in the torture and degrading treatment of suspected terrorists, an investigation has concluded.

The report of the Taskforce on Preserving Medical Professionalism in National Security Detention Centres concludes that after 9/11, health professionals working with the military and intelligence services "designed and participated in cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment and torture of detainees".

Medical professionals were in effect told that their ethical mantra "first do no harm" did not apply, because they were not treating people who were ill.

So doctors can torture a detainee because they are not ill, so therefore they are not performing a medical services. But MD's can torture and assist others in making a "terror suspect" so medically compromised that they are rendered permanently damaged or die.

Dr. Mengele, meet Dick Cheney, the CIA and the Pentagon.

It gets worse, some of the abuses are still going on, according to the taskforce report:

The taskforce says that unethical practices by medical personnel, required by the military, continue today. The DoD "continues to follow policies that undermine standards of professional conduct" for interrogation, hunger strikes, and reporting abuse. Protocols have been issued requiring doctors and nurses to participate in the force-feeding of detainees, including forced extensive bodily restraints for up to two hours twice a day.

The Rumsfeld/Cheney torture machine adopted the sleight of hand of reclassifying doctors as "safety officers," a macabre euphemism that technically gave doctors cover for performing torture.